We entered the new year in the wonderful company of our many friends! For the 4th time, together with our partner Society of Friends of the Museum, we organised a weekend trip to Łódź in January. On the first day, Friday, we went to the MS1 for the opening of Marek Sobczyk’s exhibition Prototypes 05: Marek Sobczyk. A Trip on the Wire [Polentransport] curated by Hanna Wróblewska, who showed us around the exhibition together with the artist. What is Marek Sobczyk’s latest exhibition about? While visiting the space of the exhibition “Prototypes 05: Marek Sobczyk. A Trip on the Wire [Polentransport]”, we follow the meandering installation which leads us to subsequent paintings. The structure made of 180 metres of galvanized wire is an artistic tribute to Katarzyna Kobro. The work is part of Marek Sobczyk’s long-term project “Museum” (in inverted commas!), under which the artist enters into a dialogue with the works of such artists as: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Stanisław Dróżdż, James Joyce, Jeff Koons, Kazimir Malevich, and Roman Opałka. At the exhibition “A Trip on the Wire“.[Polentransport], the artist is in dialogue with Katarzyna Kobro, with Stanisław Lem’s “Solaris”, and with Joseph Beuys, at whose famous gift from 1981 he decides to look with a critical eye
After a short break for Christmas and New Year, we are back to invite you, as a reminder of our visit to Teresa Gierzyńska’s exhibition “Women live for love”, to see it at the Zachęta Gallery. What can we expect from the exhibition? The rich body of work of Teresa Gierzyńska (b. 1947), sculptor, photographer and graphic artist, still remains unknown to the general public. The large, monographic exhibition at the Zachęta, accompanied by an extensive publication, provides for the first time a full insight into the artist’s original work, situated at the intersection of various disciplines and media. The exhibition’s title is taken from Lauren Berlant’s book Female Complaint. The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (2008). It offers an excellent commentary on art that grew out of opposition to the images of femininity and stereotypes about the social role of women and their ideal lives as mediated by mass culture. The exhibition will be open until 6 March. At the same time, you can see Teresa Gierzyńska’s exhibition “Pause” in the friendly Gunia Nowik Gallery!
On 25 November, the opening day of the exhibition: “Between Collectivism and Individualism. The Japanese Avant-Garde in the 1950s and 1960s”, we had the pleasure of inviting members of the Society to an evening, intimate curatorial tour at Zachęta.
Maria Brewińska, curator of the title exhibition and earlier ones: “Gendai: Contemporary Art of Japan” and “Yayoi Kusama”, took us, not for the first time, on a journey to Japan. In the case of the latest exhibition, the avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s turned out to be her topic of interest. The works gathered at the exhibition, which we were able to see during the guided tour, belong to various media such as new painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, graphics, performance, photography and film. They reflect the dynamism and energy of art emerging in a unique period of socio-economic growth in Japan, which for the first time in its history joined the global processes of change. The country, devastated by war, was recovering at a dizzying pace, and an exceptional combination of circumstances created favourable conditions for numerous artistic activities in the 1950s. The exhibition can be seen at Zachęta until 13 March 2022.
The trip of SEFA members to Dresden was full of valuable meetings, visits to art galleries and exhibitions, as well as walks along the Dresden architecture trail, including: We went on a visit to the Gebr. Lehmann Gallery, where we saw, among other things, the exhibition “GlassPhone” (Tilman Hornig). We visited the exhibition “Johannes Vermeer. Vom Innehalten’, which shows, among other things, one of the most famous works of Dutch painting of the Golden Age, the painting “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window”. We also met Susanne Altmann, an art historian living and working in Dresden, who showed us around the city and introduced us to the exhibition “Deutsches Design 1949-1989” in the Kunsthalle.
The main purpose of SEFA’s November trip to Dresden was to see Egidio Marzona’s collection at the Japanisches Palais, which the collector donated to the museum in Dresden. The Archiv der Avantgarden contains one of the most extensive collections of artworks, objects and documents of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century. In two years’ time, the collection will be housed in a purpose-built pavilion. On the example of the collection, which has been gathered since the end of the 1960s, one can trace the richness of artistic ideas, radical utopias, as well as surprising juxtapositions of artists’ works. We were able to see the collection in the company of Dr Przemysław Strożek – the curator of the collection, who deals with the history of the avant-garde, modernism and contemporary art on a daily basis.
On the first weekend of November we took SEFA’s members to Wroclaw and Dresden. The trip was full of encounters with art touching on difficult and important topics such as immigration, transsexuality and addiction to the digital world. We looked at art, creating a community for a good cause which, in these difficult times, is the promotion of culture. On the first day, we visited Wrocław institutions, which showed us how strong the voice of NGOs is in Poland and how important, in promoting culture, are all grassroots initiatives, including a visit to 66P and a talk with Marek Puchała – co-creator of this extraordinary place; We had a meeting with Tobiasz Papuczys at the Grotowski Institute, we were shown around the Slavs and Tatars exhibition at Op Enheim and shown around the headquarters by director Kama Wróbel; we also visited the Krupa Gallery, which is being built in a historic building in Wrocław’s Market Square.
The second day of the WGW 2021 weekend was full of artistic impressions. Together with the Society of Friends of the Museum we went on a bus trip to places a bit more distant on the map of Warsaw. In between the sightseeing, we had lunch in the beautiful garden of Le Guern Gallery. Among the galleries and exhibitions we visited were: Puro Hotels, Death of a Man, Fort Photography Institute, Magnetic Fields, Szydłowski Gallery, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Heart of a Man Gallery, East Gallery, Raster, Le Guern Gallery
The next edition of Warsaw Gallery Weekend (30.09-3.10.2021), with two days of meetings with contemporary art – visits to galleries and meetings with artists and exhibition curators – is already over. The first day of the gallery tours was marked by a bicycle and walking excursion organised together with the friendly Society of Friends of the Museum. Among the galleries visited were: Piktogram, Hos Gallery, Leto Gallery, Asymetria, Galeria Szara, Propaganda, Polana Institute, Gunia Nowik Gallery, Galeria Esta, Rodriguez Gallery, Jednostka Gallery
The trip to Lublin also included a visit to the studio of artist Magdalena Franczak, which is located in the Słowackiego housing estate designed by Oskar and Zofia Hansen in the early 1960s. The artist told us about her recent and current projects, the history of choosing the place for her studio and allowed us to look at her works up close. The unusual afternoon culminated in a walk around the estate of the famous architects. Magdalena Franczak (born in 1978) – an interdisciplinary artist using various media: painting, drawing, photography, performance. Creates objects and works with site-specific space. She engages in dialogues with theatre, designing costumes and set designs. In his artistic practice, he tries to redefine the existing order, giving forms new meanings. By merging forms taken out of reality, he creates a story about a utopian world in which each voice can resound with equal force without drowning out the other.
During SEFA’s visit to the Biała Gallery we met with its director Anna Nawrot, thanks to whom we got to know the history and colourful stories from the life of the institution and had the opportunity to look into almost every nook and cranny of the gallery and take a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition “The Tower of Women²”. “The Tower of Women²”, featuring only female artists, symbolically refers to the exhibition entitled “The Tower of Women”. “It was the third exhibition organised in 1985, in the first year of the existence of Biała Gallery in Lublin. Young Polish artists participated in it: Renata Boguszewska, Ewa Ciepielewska, Bożena Grzyb-Jarodzka, Urszula Kłoczowska, Krystyna Kutyna, Irena Nawrot, Anna Płotnicka, Małgorzata Rysz, Danuta Wierzbicka and Anna Nawrot – the director of Biała Gallery.
The trip to Lublin coincided with the opening of the latest exhibition “Mame-Loshn” at the Labyrinth Gallery. We could not miss it. The exhibition “Mame-Loshn” deals with a language which was formed in constant movement, without its own territory. Yiddish, the “mother” language, remains in close relation with the sphere of everyday life and the human inner world. This places it, as it were, in opposition to the “mother” language which reflects power relations.
In March, after a two-year break, the Lublin Castle, which houses the National Museum in Lublin, reopened to visitors. Being in Lublin, we could not miss the opportunity to see the newly created permanent exhibition “The Castle and Avant-garde Group”. It features works by Lublin-based avant-garde artists, which are the hallmark of the museum. The core of the exhibition, which was shown to us by its curator, Marcin Lachowski, is a presentation of the work of an avant-garde artistic group active in the second half of the 1950s in Lublin, whose name is associated with the Lublin castle – a place of the first meetings of young artists. The gallery reflects the most important tropes of modern and neo-avant-garde art related to the artistic life of Lublin, which presents in relation to the work of the classics of the Polish post-war avant-garde. Thus, the exhibition features works by leading representatives of the Zamek Group – Jan Ziemski, Włodzimierz Borowski, Tytus Dzieduszycki, alongside those by Tadeusz Rolke, Wojciech Fangor or Andrzej Wróblewski.
The vernissage and meeting with the artist Jakub Ciężki, a curator tour by Paulina Olszewska and a dinner with members of the Association for the Encouragement of Fine Arts – this is how we started the autumn artistic season and the first day of the Association’s stay in Lublin. “The Triumph of Abstraction”, Jakub Ciężki’s exhibition and the first point of our programme in Lublin, presents the artist’s pictures which seem to confirm that the abstract painting tradition is a constant source of inspiration and reinterpretation. It is also a personal manifestation for the artist, informing about the end of his earlier painting search and the beginning of a completely new chapter in his artistic work.
At the invitation of the POLIN Friends Club, we visited the extremely important exhibition “Wilhelm Sasnal: Such a Landscape”. This is a must-see exhibition for all lovers of the artist’s work and the first such large exhibition in Poland since the one in Zachęta Gallery in 2007! Alongside Sasnal’s already iconic works there are also brand new paintings created earlier this year. The artist masterfully uses visual contexts and images that are present in the public consciousness to draw his personal portrait of the Polish landscape, in which the memory of the Holocaust is present. When asked why the Jewish theme, and especially the theme of the Holocaust, is so important to him, he answers that this is due to the feeling of absence that accompanies him and is difficult to define. The exhibition leaves us with an important message about the importance, for our memory, of a personal approach to our history. This is a must-see exhibishion and thank you for the invitation!
Our stay in the Tricity turned out to be a great opportunity to take a look into the creation of a branch of the National Museum in Gdańsk – NOMUS New Art Museum in Gdańsk. We went there on Saturday morning at the invitation of Aneta Szyłak, director of the Museum, in whose company we visited the building and talked about the idea of creating a new institution on the artistic map of Gdańsk and its plans for the future. It was a really engaging discussion. The opportunity to visit this place already now is a real privilege for members of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts – the official opening is not scheduled until October this year! PS We have particularly fond memories of Węgielek, whose appearance brought a lot of joy among the Society’s members and, thanks to some unusual coincidence, proved that those who love animals, also love art.
This is not the end of our Tricity encounters with art! Saturday afternoon brought just as many artistic impressions as the morning. Together with Tomek Kopcewicz, one of the residents of the Artists’ Colony in 2001-2008, we went for a walk around the shipyard. Tomek – painter, video artist, sailor and resident of Gdansk at the same time – showed us around the artistic studios and galleries, enriching our walk with numerous anecdotes. For those of you who are going to visit Tricity in the near future, we recommend especially Agata Nowosielska’s exhibition “Nirvana” in the Centre for Contemporary Art Łaźnia. We managed to meet Agata and curator Jolanta Woszczenko, who personally showed us around the exhibition. Through a series of over 30 oil compositions and collages created over the last two years, the artist presents us with her vision of nirvana, proposing a path through imagination. Hurry – you can only see the exhibition until 1 August!
During a trip to Gdańsk and Sopot, on the first weekend of July, we visited cultural institutions, artists’ studios, a sculpture park, and met with curators, collectors and artists. Numerous conversations about art, the role of cultural institutions and memories of excellent exhibitions followed. “From Black Mountain College to Pop Art. Postwar American Art and Documents from the Archiv der Avantgarden” at the State Gallery in Sopot – was the first exhibition we had the opportunity to see. We saw it in the company of collector Egidio Marzona and curator Przemysław Strożek, who showed us around the exhibition on Friday afternoon. “From Black Mountain College to Pop Art” shows the post-war artistic transformation in the United States based on part of the collection of the Archiv der Avantgarden in Dresden. The works selected for the exhibition in Sopot are an important testimony to the innovative artistic practices initiated in the 20th century on the other side of the Atlantic. The artists whose works can be seen at the exhibition include: Andy Warhol, Josef Albers, Carl Andre, Lawrence Weiner, Cy Twombly, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Dan Flavin, Bill Bollinger, Dorothea Rockburne, Carolee Schneemann or Robert Indiana. Where else did we go during our stay in the Tricity? You will find out in the following postings, in which, in the form of a short report, we publish another portion of memories from the trip.
On a hot Thursday afternoon, we found shelter in the majestic and… pleasantly cool interiors of the National Museum, where we went at the invitation of the friendly Hestia Artistic Travel Foundation, to see the exhibition “Different Perspectives Dutch and Flemish Painting from the ERGO Hestia Collection”. The exhibition will present paintings by 17th-century Dutch and Flemish masters on loan from the ERGO Hestia Insurance Company. This is the only corporate collection of Old Masters paintings in Poland, never before shown to the public. The exhibition will be supplemented by selected works from the National Museum in Warsaw. On display there are 52 works by eminent artists, such as Salomon van Ruysdael, David Teniers the Younger, Jan Porcellis, Gabriel Metsu, and Jan Breughel the Younger. We were shown around the exhibition by its curator, Aleksandra Janiszewska. The exhibition, which includes a number of accompanying events, can be seen until 25 July. We heartily recommend and thank you for the invitation!
Belonging to the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts entails participating in many truly exceptional events! It was no different last Saturday, when we visited Mikołaj Chylak’s exhibition ‘I don’t know who told me this story’, located in two spaces – the Exhibition Bureau in Warsaw and the Zofia and Wacław Nałkowski Museum in Wołomin. The title of the exhibition refers to the process of forgetting and then the return of the forgotten. The idea behind this project emerged last year, during the first summer of the pandemic. We were shown around the exhibition in the Exhibition Bureau by the curator Anna Łazar and Mikołaj Chylak. At the Museum in Wołomin they were joined by Ada Rączka and Natan Kryszk, whose works accompany Mikołaj Chylak’s painting and interventions at the exhibition. And because in the Society we value the company of others, we ended our trip with a picnic on the grass! The sunny, June weather and the beautiful, green garden in front of the Museum encouraged us to interact together in this way. Many thanks to the Exhibitions Bureau and the Zofia and Wacław Nałkowski Museum!
What a weekend it was! Loosening the restrictions also means a return to the out-of-town excursions of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts and the possibility of communing with art on weekends as well! We spent Sunday afternoon at the Oczyszczalnia Miejsce – an unusual place with a unique atmosphere not far from Warsaw. Anna Myca, painter and co-owner of the place, invited us to her studio located in the area of the Oczyszczalnia Miejsce, whose scenery consists of meadows, ponds and trees. Anna Myca was born in 1966, in Świdwin. In 1991 she obtained a diploma (with honours) in the atelier of S. Gierowski, at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She supplemented this diploma with an appendix on wall painting under the supervision of E. Tarkowski. Since the beginning of her artistic activity, she has been creating in wall techniques (fresco and sgraffito), as well as painting on natural equipment, such as wardrobe or table tops. Oczyszczalnia Miejsce that she runs is an extraordinary place where art meets nature. On site, in addition to a visit and guided tour of the artist’s studio, members of the Society enjoyed lunch from the unique, locally run kitchen and a moment of relaxation amidst the greenery in which the Oczyszczalnia Miejsce is immersed. Many thanks for the invitation!
It was today that the long-awaited new exhibition at Zachęta Gallery – “Cold Revolution” – was opened! On this occasion, we invited members of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts to a pre-premiere, morning curatorial tour through the exhibition, during which we were the first to hear about how the idea for the exhibition was born, as well as to talk to its creators and curators. “Cold Revolution” is the result of the collaboration of curators: Joanna Kordjak and Jérôme Bazin, as well as leading cultural institutions from the Czech Republic, France, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. It shows the social revolution of the 1950s through painting, photography, film, design and architecture (over 400 works from six countries of the former Eastern Bloc: Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary). The exhibition is open from 27.05-19.09. You are warmly welcome!
On Wednesday evening, members of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts had the pleasure of taking part in a unique meeting with Katarzyna Kozyra. The artist showed us around her exhibition ‘Model World’, in which she returns to her role as a sculptor, working with this medium for the first time since Animal Pyramid. Created especially for the exhibition at the Institute of Industrial Design, the installation consists of several hundred objects used by the artist in her projects, becoming an unusual summary of Kozyra’s creative output of the last 25 years. The exhibition features over 250 original objects used by Katarzyna Kozyra in her most famous projects, including Olimpia, Łaźnia, Łaźnia męska, Kara i zbrodnia. These are the last days of the exhibition, which can be seen at the Institute of Industrial Design only until next Sunday 23 May inclusive!
The Society organized a meeting with Joanna Rajkowska on her solo exhibition “Rhizopolis” in Zachęta– National Gallery of Art. The artist invited us for a tour of the exhibtion and later for a discussion, thanks to which we had the opportunity to hear about the backstage of works and other projects that the artist carried out in public space, as well as about her plans for the future. Rhizopolis is a set design built for a futuristic film. His scenario outlined by Rajkowska is a proposal of radical dependence, in which the hitherto man-dominated nature turns out to be in its unmoved rescue, providing what is necessary to sustain human life. Visiting the exhibition, we enter the area of both the art installation and the set design for the film in which we play ourselves, and to which perhaps we will write sequels.
Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2020 will be different from the previous ones. 10. edition finds us in a new reality, altered by a pandemic that has hit the art community particularly hard. Taking every precaution, we will meet at the beginning of October at the jubilee edition of WGW, during which 29 galleries from Warsaw, Łódź, Poznań, Gliwice and Katowice will present over 100 Polish and foreign artists.
A January outing to Łódź is slowly becoming a New Year tradition of the Association for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. After a relatively “lazy” Friday evening (i.e. only one exhibition during the whole day – the vernissage of Marek Sobczyk’s exhibition), Saturday passed much more intensively for the members of the Association: At the Central Museum of Textiles, courtesy of our guides Agnieszka Wojciechowska-Sej and Maja Pawlikowska, we saw the exhibition “City of fashion machine”. We also went to the Museum of Art in connection with the 90th anniversary of the first opening to the public of the international collection of the a.r. group, which marked the beginning of the Museum. There, we saw the exhibitions ‘The Avant-garde Museum’ and ‘The Earth is Flat Again’ – on which we were shown around by Maria Wasińska-Stelmaszczyk and Jakub Gawkowski. This extremely interesting programme was prepared especially for us by the MS Club together with Maja Wasińska from the Museum of Art in Łódź – thank you very much!